Simple prompts that shift people’s attention to accuracy increase the quality of news that people share on social media as they cause people to stop and reflect on what they are posting, leading to the slow of misinformation. This approach does not have the same scalability issue as strict-fact checking approaches. 

Alternative to fact-checking

Fact-checking is not scalable as it requires substantial time and effort, warnings are only put on blantly false news, and it often fails to reach the intended audience. 

New York University

The process of determining the accuracy of information. Often performed and published by professional fact checkers such as Politifact or Snopes.

Fact Checking

Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand, The Psychology of Fake News, Trends in Cognitive Science, Volume 25, Issue 5, 2021, Pages 388-402, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007

The Psychology of Fake News

Software used to flag fake news, which is often detected either by independent fact-checkers or crowdsourcing algorithms because of the fact the manually flagging fake news can be difficult.

Fact Checking Flags

Criteria for Evaluating the Truth of a Message

The Schema-plus-tag model relates to fact checking because it posits the idea that people may forget the link between the negation of the fact check and the false claim it is debunking.

Schema-plus-tag Model and Fact Checking

Overall, fact-checking has been found to positively influence beliefs. Although, there are differences in effectiveness depending on the type of fact-checking message, pre-existing beliefs, and inclusion of visual elements. 

Effectiveness of Fact-Checking

Individuals often only share fact-checks online when they align with their political views or other pre-existing beliefs.

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